Benton: Think, work beyond county lines

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How has your professional background prepared you to lead DHHS?
I’ve spent 39 years in public management with more than 25 of those years as a senior executive at the local and state levels. That’s given me the management skills needed to direct a complex, diverse agency. It also gave me the grounding in the people side of the equation. Whether it is the City of Raleigh, DENR or DHHS, you always have to understand and remember that you are serving real people who are depending on you to ensure that they receive vital services. You’ve got to have both management and advocacy skills to do this job. You have to be able to advocate for what’s right. Once you get that, you have to be able to manage the programs efficiently and effectively for the good of your consumers and the agency’s bottom line.

What is the strongest talent you bring to managing this agency?
The ability to establish levels of management accountability and performance, assuring there are effective strategies for the programs and how they are implemented, understanding that the CEO has a major role in assuring that the agency is attentive to and connected with the people it serves, and paying close attention to the key basic elements in an organization, including budget/financial management and human resource management.

What do you see as the role of county commissioners and the county manager in local human services programs?
County government has to pay close attention to these programs and how they affect local communities. DHHS needs feedback on program execution – both positive and negative. You see how programs work on the ground, so your input will help us be more efficient in using a limited amount of public resources to deliver very important services to some of our most fragile folk. Hopefully, county governments see themselves as a partner in framing and delivering services, rather than feeling that the state is imposing something on counties. We’ve got to have a partnership, rather than an “us and them” perspective relative to local and state relations. I read and return my own e-mail. I’m open to sitting down with county representatives at any time. And, I want your letters.

How can counties most effectively work with the department in the delivery of human services?
We need to think beyond county line silos. The fact is that some services might be delivered more effectively in ways that don’t fit strictly inside a county’s boundaries. We should look at programs in terms of how to help people, not how to make them fit into a particular county. We need to look at economies of scale. Does each county need to be providing administrative support for each service, or would it make more sense to merge some of those responsibilities, so that we could use less money on administrative costs and more on actually providing services to real people? I recognize it is sometimes hard to think along these lines, because with my years of experience in local government I know that turf is often hard fought. But, I also know that some of our greatest successes when I was in municipal government came only through cooperation across lines. The Neuse River is cleaner today because all of the entities in its watershed addressed the problem jointly.

What are the greatest challenges facing your department?

What do you hope to accomplish at DHHS?
When Gov. Easley appointed me to this position, it was clear that mental health reform is at the top of my agenda. That means advancing implementation to a level of service stability that is sustainable from a financial and organizational perspective and has more consistency in service across the state, especially in critical areas such as crisis services. We also need to improve healthcare for children, which means working with our federal partners to ensure that the S-CHIP program is adequately funded.

As counties prepare for the next administration, what information, materials or contacts would you like to have from county government or the NCACC to help you in your oversight of human services programs?
We need your help in articulating how the services we fund help real people in your counties. ... We want to face the transition team with good examples about why our programs need to continue and thrive. We also need county help in program expertise. Some of the best and brightest folks are at the county level. It would be nice to provide an incoming administration with a list of county experts who can help a transition team understand programs at the state and county level. We need to be able to articulate the combined investment of public resources in human service programs and the combined benefits for both levels of operation.